Instead, imagine a learning center that . . .
Follow along on a walk through a "21st century school."
Your experience begins with a welcoming, sun-filled entry lobby that looks much like a civic convention center. A computerized information kiosk displays today's scheduled events with monitors showing live announcements by students.
Adjacent to the lobby is a series of meeting rooms with video conferencing, where a company demonstrates new products. Another conference room provides space for a small group of seniors working on a community resource project.
Future schools designed for team work, distance learning.
Continuing inside, you enter a centralized commons that functions like a town square, where students are presenting a group project using computer-generated graphic displays and scale models to an audience of guests and teachers.
Surrounding the commons are windows showing high-ceiling studios and laboratories for hands-on projects by student groups.
A passageway between studios leads to a cluster of various-sized open and closed rooms wrapped around an open resource area where students are moving wheeled storage units to create privacy for their work area.
A student comments, "I like my school because in houses, I can get to know kids and the teachers better. I see my friends from other houses when we get together for lunch, fitness or assemblies."
The old school model of a "factory for students" sitting in controlled rows can't adequately prepare our next generation. Our world is no longer a post-industrial society, but rather a highly technological information age.
The educational philosophy that focused primarily on memorization and passive learning cannot fully prepare students for an age where problem solving, working in teams, and sustainable decision-making is needed.
Educational researchers such as Howard Gardner suggest that people learn through "multiple learning intelligences." We need to accommodate all learning methods to make sure all students can learn. For example, schools designed only for lecture and passive learning ignore the needs of visual or tactile learners.
Educators, parents, planners, architects and business representatives have begun to apply these concepts of how we learn in recent school programming efforts. They are creating a new learning paradigm.
Schools can be described as Learning Centers, expanding the circle of who uses them to almost everyone as we come to view ourselves as life-long learners.
How are students reacting? More than ever, students desire the connection of education to real-life situations and the employment marketplace. Students want unrestrained learning situations in which they can learn at their own pace, not "lock-step" instruction. New educational software and technologies allow self-pace instruction.
Students frequently ask for free access to equipment and resources and are willing to accept group responsibility. Students believe they should be further entrusted with their educational choices, means and results.
Acceptance of this new learning paradigm is difficult, as we are naturally skeptical of change. Change is not without risk but our greater educational risk is in refusing to accept our rapidly changing world and leaving our students and future leaders unprepared.
Entire sections in the classified ads are now dedicated to high tech employment and the expanding health care field as an example of where today's opportunities lie.
Corporate America is demanding our educational system meet new conditions in order to provide employers with individuals who can compete in today's highly competitive marketplace.
The Boeing Company has identified specific needs for new employees: that they are able to work in teams, have well-rounded lives, and are life-long learners.
The new learning paradigm is threatening to many who don't want to lose basic curriculum of the traditional education core. They are correct in their concern. The curriculum which is being re-written incorporates essential learnings to be mastered before graduation, and addresses definitive learning outcomes.
Seat time requirements for graduation will not provide Americans with a strong educational system. Across the country, where quantitative requirements are being raised, student achievement scores are going up.
The educator's challenge is to prepare new curriculum which is responsive to these multiple learning intelligences. This is a significant challenge, and it will take years to train teachers in interdisciplinary instruction, project-based learning, teamwork and portfolio assessment.
The good news is that architects are helping meet the challenge through designs that accommodate and facilitate these new educational ideas. Facilities are also flexible and adaptable for future changes. In effect, the new school designs will lead educational reform.
Organizational impacts
Architectural concepts responding to the new paradigm have many of the following characteristics:
Design features
Educational features
With this glimpse of a new school, we see similarities to real-life, friendly, home environments. The smaller, safe groupings of students provide a strong sense of identity and belonging. A closer association of students and teachers fosters dynamic, active learning groups that are productive, responsible, and proud of their accomplishments.
The new learning paradigm applies to all of us as we find ourselves in need of retraining or continuing education to keep up with changing technologies. We will grow to see ourselves as life-long learners who find learning challenging, exciting and fulfilling.
Once we understand the ways to prepare our students for a rapidly changing world, we can accept the new learning paradigm and enable our schools to truly place education as the top priority.
Mark M. Miller is a principal in Integrus Architecture.
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